What Matters Most Is Showing Up

I started my second novel in the spring of 2017, before my son’s first birthday. I got my annual Moleskine (the twelve-month weekly planner with a calendar, extra large, softcover) and slowly, methodically, in a sleepless caffeinated daze, mapped the book. One scene in each calendar square, one scene per day. The novel takes place over the course of six months, and, needing structure, I took myself through it that way, one month at a stretch, one day at a time. The book opens in July, so I started writing in July. One thousand words a day, no matter what.

One thousand words a day: a cliché now, possibly. Sit down every day at the appointed time and aim for one thousand words, and no matter what, try and get there. Take a class with me and this is what I’ll tell you to do.

In recovery meetings they tell you to keep coming back even if you don’t want to, because it works. When you can’t trust yourself, you trust the program. Regardless of how much this works for recovery, it works for writing books. What I’ve come to realize over the course of writing three books now—with a hazy idea of beginning my fourth, because every book is different and I’m different, and every time you write a new book it’s the first time you’ve ever written a book, regardless of what career writers say; it’s different and you never know what you’re doing—is that it doesn’t matter so much what you show up with. What matters, mostly, is that you show up.

The first Catapult class I taught was the craft-focused six-week workshop “Voice and Vision,” centered on getting your bearings as a writer and going toward the light. It was a bit vague, though, and got lost in the catalogue. Julie Buntin, Catapult’s first Writing Programs director, encouraged me to come up with something more results-focused and specific, so I came up with “40,000 Words in 40 Days,” a concept I more or less stole from Faulkner, who wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks on the night shift at a power plant.

If Faulkner can write a book this way, someone else can too. If I can write a book this way, someone else can too. If I can make the best thing I’ve ever made on no sleep, no time, no artist’s life, no fancy residency, and under massive amounts of pressure, someone else can too. To borrow from Giancarlo DiTrapano, legendary publisher of Tyrant Books, If it works for me, it works. And so I thought I’d share a method, more useful than the same desperate bleatings of show don’t tell or treat the reader like x instead of y. Instead of overused shadowy suggestions that presume you don’t know what you’re doing, I wanted to share a system that can always be made available, in spite of/in tandem with external factors, anxieties, and pressures.

Half of it is talent; the other half is discipline. The third half is knowing what you’re working for, and I believe—I know—that it has to be more than obsession. Obsession lights the creative fire, but faith sustains it. Faith in what you’re doing, faith in the project to believe in you the times you don’t believe in it. (This has to do with singularity, being the only person able to tell a specific story a specific way.) It’s not about forcing anything, aiming for perfection. It’s about having enough faith in your domain that you’ll rearrange and cut and move as much as you need out of the way to make room for the thing that deserves the space. How much is in your life that doesn’t belong there? How much do you give your time and attention to which could be done by someone else or doesn’t need to be done at all?

If I can write a book this way, someone else can too.   

When I started drafting my second novel, American Fruit, I was a new mother with no money. I sent a wish out into the universe in the form of this essay (four years later, wish granted—I have that kind of job now and I complain about the toll it’s taking, and I’m aware of the ouroboric quality and the greener grass, and I laugh). In draft mode, I went to the coffee shop every day saying I had freelance work (lying) to spend time with the novel; in revision mode during high Covid-19, I rented a studio space and went there to work. I didn’t always know what I was doing, but I gave myself the space, trusting that the book would show itself to me if I made conscious room to hear it. I stole inspiration from whatever was around. I read Big Magic in one afternoon while preparing for an endoscopy. Well, everyone takes shots at Liz Gilbert, but this book changed my life. If an idea is yours, she says, you have to claim it and not let anyone else have it, and that means steady interaction. She writes about having an idea for a novel and sitting on it too long until the passion died, and then the universe transferred it to Ann Patchett, who did write the book.

So: If a work is yours, you have to keep putting heat on it. Like love.

With that, I am aware no one likes writing advice in the form of step work, but I have some for you. This is what worked for me, and if you want, it can work for you too.

1. Steal the time. Take the time you need for your work by any means necessary. Schedule yourself. First thing in the morning if you can, or whenever a realistic time for you is. Identify it and make it nonnegotiable. If you have an unsupportive family that doesn’t believe in art or work, lie. Invent a freelancing job to give yourself permission to disappear for an hour or two, into a tool shed or the coffee shop. There is nothing better than being able to give yourself what you need; time is a gift when someone else lets you have it, but we’re not about gifts. We’re about entitlement. Become entitled. The book will only exist if you make it so. If you’re into the tarot, this is all Magician. Give yourself the tools and space you need to bring it to life.

2. Make a constellation. This part is lifted directly from my syllabus. It’s got monetary value, at least one-sixth of the class price, so bookmark this! A constellation is the outline. Many people have this academic type of association with outline, this A-to-B-to-C introduction-body-conclusion model that can feel inapplicable to a creative project at worst, constricting and out of touch at best. While the conventional outline may work for some, it can often be difficult to conceive of a work’s shape and texture this way.

Think of the outline instead as a constellation, a shape made up of stars—points of light—marked down and drawn together by connective tissue. Imagine these points as the images you already have in your mind, elements you know belong in the story, the hard crystal parts—and the lines that draw them together are the connective threads that make up the shape the whole ends up taking. These connective threads are mutable, as there are infinite ways to connect constellations, but it just so happens that the pictures in the sky we know are the ones that have been drawn and named already.

When Bukowski wrote, “Don’t try. Don’t work. It’s there,” I feel that to some extent he was talking about this constellation. If you look at the work as if it exists already and only needs to be uncovered and connected together, bringing it to fruition suddenly becomes much more accessible. Thinking of the work as it is—as a metaphysical concept with an existing form that only needs a physical push—helps you take the spooky uncertainty out of the project and approach it in a more clear-eyed, self-assured way.

Take the time to build it up. Really give the whole of the book some thought. Let it reveal itself to you, in all its light and shadow. The more complete and stable the rough sketch is, the easier the color and connection will be.

The important thing is to build up some structure, but with the goal of retaining freedom. Imagine your outline as the titanium implant that holds a broken bone in place: It’s there for the bone to build around, and whether the implant stays in (the project stays true to outline) or you get it removed (the project deviates from the outline), the structure will hold. The implant is not there to cage the bone, but to keep it growing steady.

3. Write the book. Put your ass in the chair for one hour a day, or one thousand words a day, whatever feels better, whatever comes first. Take your anxiety to work. I have a shot glass on my desk, and every time I show up with something weighing on me—fear, self-doubt, uselessness, death—I write the feeling on a piece of paper and drop it in the glass, and I let it sit in purgatory while I sit and do my work. Then when I’m done, I take it out. Tear it up or burn it or save it for the next day. You can’t count your anxiety at the end of the month, but you can count your pages. Notice what you’re showing up with and either use it, adjust it, or ignore it. Therapists advise you not to compartmentalize, but sometimes you should.

4. Remember that nothing good gets away. John Steinbeck’s way of saying, If it doesn’t fit, it’s ugly anyway. Applicable everywhere, and always true.

Think seriously about how you want to apply your talent and discipline in this life. Do you want money? This is a valid thing. It’s okay to be driven by money, if that’s the type of person you are or the thing you most need at the moment. If that’s it, dedicate yourself wholly to the goal. I’m serious. There’s so much unnecessary back-and-forth about success and money and “selling out” and “making it,” but there are two landscapes: There is art and there is commercialism. There are two different sets of rules and two ways to play the game, and the overlap that happens—a really great piece of art ends up making a lot of money, for example—is both possible and almost always an accident. Know your stakes and commit to the uncertainty of your worldly outcome with nothing but joy.

I realize craft essays like this usually show up after someone has a book deal, or a pub date, or an official indication of forthcoming success. I don’t have those things yet for American Fruit or Netratā, but I know I will have them when it’s time. The thing you can’t do, ever, is wait. Wait for the right time, wait for the signs, wait for something to fold or make room or otherwise give you permission to begin. In my experience as a master procrastinator, my only reason ever for not doing something was not wanting to. People often say It’s not life or death and happily sign their lives away to a day job that makes them want to die but keeps them alive (the delightful paradox) and put off what keeps them engaged and vital for as long as possible due to fear (what are you afraid of?) or imposter syndrome (we’re all pretending) or thinking they won’t get anywhere (nowhere to get but the pearly gates so relax and have fun). There are so many reasons to not do something. But if you have a reason to do it, no doubt you’ll find a way.

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